Commonplace 235 George & His Contemporaries: WT Stead. PART ONE.
For all of George’s career as the unappreciated amateur delusional-aristocrat legend of Victorian English literature, a parallel life was being lived by one of the towering figures of British cultural life: journalist; news editor; social activist and campaigner; outspoken critic of injustice and hypocrisy; scourge of everyone he disapproved of; deviser of the publication The Review of Reviews; part-time maritime sailor; promoter of coitus interruptus as a form of birth control; several time Nobel Peace Prize nominee proto-feminist; occasional employer of the Divine Oscar Wilde; religious zealot; forthright peace campaigner; ego-maniacal diplomat; friend and advisor to kings; outrageous sexist flirt and sporter of an exorbitant beard, the force of nature that was William Thomas Stead (1849-1912).
Stead was never a shrinking violet, even as a boy touched by strong Protestant faith and a determination to demonstrate his special relationship with his god. That he turned his hand to doing (mostly) good was a great loss to the criminal world – he would have made a great con artist or international jewel thief, or a Gangs of New York style leader of assorted ruffians. He was aggressive, focused, ruthless, relentless, and he had that deep vein of sentimentality so beloved of Mafia dons and East End psychopaths.
We know he was a fan of George’s ‘realist’ fiction, but that may have been down to the mistaken belief that what George was writing about was heart-felt and informed by a sympathy for the underdog. In this, Stead would have been projecting his own motives in reporting the scandal of the British political and class system as oppressor of the poor onto George’s need to capture an audience to buy books in a time when 'poverty' fiction was a fad - much as 'misery' fiction enjoyed a vogue ten years ago. But George offered no redemptive resolution to any sort of problem. He was the dispassionate onlooker and social anthropologist Positivist fatalist who thought nothing could be done because the ‘natural order’ of this chaotic world requires – demands! – there always be a suffering underclass who are born to endure, even enjoy, their suffering. WT Stead was an ‘if you’re not part of the solution you are part of the problem’ kind of chap, but he was never soft on those who (in his opinion) did little to better themselves or struggle their way out of the sloughs of deprivation, and had harsh views on how they should be treated. His attitude was ‘God helps those who help themselves’ – that ludicrous Sunday school text that fails to understand the causes of deprivation as thoroughly as it proves that religious faith does not by default make for empathy – and he also thought the workhouse should be denied those who refused to scratch a meagre living from the gutters and refuse tips of life. Like many who claim to have a working relationship with a deity, accepting what that deity hands out is part and parcel of that faith – if life awards you the shitty end of the stick, you better make a good job of holding on to it and thank your lucky stars (and your deity) there is any sort of stick to hold on to. And, like many influential Victorians, Stead thought help should only be extended to what they termed 'the deserving poor' - and woe betide anyone not considered 'deserving'.
His death at the sinking of the Titanic was the entirely fitting end for a man who would not have gone gentle into that good night on sea or land, or even in the air or outer space if those options had been available. Stead would have gone kicking and screaming, singing songs exulting his maker – ‘For Those In Peril On The Sea’, praising his Eternal Father as he sank beneath the waves click.
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| The NY Central Park Memorial to WT Stead click |
Stead was never a shrinking violet, even as a boy touched by strong Protestant faith and a determination to demonstrate his special relationship with his god. That he turned his hand to doing (mostly) good was a great loss to the criminal world – he would have made a great con artist or international jewel thief, or a Gangs of New York style leader of assorted ruffians. He was aggressive, focused, ruthless, relentless, and he had that deep vein of sentimentality so beloved of Mafia dons and East End psychopaths.
We know he was a fan of George’s ‘realist’ fiction, but that may have been down to the mistaken belief that what George was writing about was heart-felt and informed by a sympathy for the underdog. In this, Stead would have been projecting his own motives in reporting the scandal of the British political and class system as oppressor of the poor onto George’s need to capture an audience to buy books in a time when 'poverty' fiction was a fad - much as 'misery' fiction enjoyed a vogue ten years ago. But George offered no redemptive resolution to any sort of problem. He was the dispassionate onlooker and social anthropologist Positivist fatalist who thought nothing could be done because the ‘natural order’ of this chaotic world requires – demands! – there always be a suffering underclass who are born to endure, even enjoy, their suffering. WT Stead was an ‘if you’re not part of the solution you are part of the problem’ kind of chap, but he was never soft on those who (in his opinion) did little to better themselves or struggle their way out of the sloughs of deprivation, and had harsh views on how they should be treated. His attitude was ‘God helps those who help themselves’ – that ludicrous Sunday school text that fails to understand the causes of deprivation as thoroughly as it proves that religious faith does not by default make for empathy – and he also thought the workhouse should be denied those who refused to scratch a meagre living from the gutters and refuse tips of life. Like many who claim to have a working relationship with a deity, accepting what that deity hands out is part and parcel of that faith – if life awards you the shitty end of the stick, you better make a good job of holding on to it and thank your lucky stars (and your deity) there is any sort of stick to hold on to. And, like many influential Victorians, Stead thought help should only be extended to what they termed 'the deserving poor' - and woe betide anyone not considered 'deserving'.
Stead was sure the right person in the right place at the right time can change the course of history and improve the fate of millions. WT usually considered himself more or less always to be the right person for whatever he considered needed to be done, and his successes were often down to his forthright manner, lack of deference for any form of social class system, and a genius for knowing who to speak to about his various causes.
Stead, more than most, realised that the rise in literacy brought about by the 1870 Education Act would require increases in the availability of things to read - and, by extension,something to spend wages on other than the basics of life, and the daily newspaper was the most accessible of reading matter to sell and buy. And, because of its availability, a newspaper could reach a wide and relatively uneducated population ripe for leading in whatever direction an editor wanted to take it. Like the shrewd businessman that he was, Stead did not aim his editorials at the poor themselves - after all, they were unlikely to be buying newspapers, though they could access them at libraries (as George and his family did). His preferred targets were the powerful who could make the necessary changes to the system, or who abused the system they ruled, observed by a readership who could be stirred up to follow down any path that would support Stead's point of view. But, like George, Stead stopped short of advocating on behalf of those at very bottom of the pile. These he saw as the rejects of society who existed in life's primordial slime, virtually un-evolved from the rabble of the Dark Ages. As with many Victorian self-confessed experts on the lower orders Stead feared (as did George) that encouraging such dregs of humanity would weaken the bloodline of the more capable. And who was there to counter this argument? After all, the poor underclass are always the least powerful group in any society, and realists might argue someone has to be at the bottom, just as someone has to be at the top, so why waste resources on fate? And, for one as touched by Christianity as was Stead, Christ's teachings on the subject will have resonated: Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces (Matthew 7:6).
A quick summary of things Stead started (as listed in Saint or Sensationalist? The Story of WT Stead by Victor Pierce Jones): newspaper advice columns; village lending libraries; penny per copy editions of the Classics of English literature; pen pals; baby adoption agencies; hostels for working women; the Peace Palace in The Hague; the Civic Federation in Chicago – and many sorts of social clubs and self-help organisations. Add to this his work exploring Spiritualism, and it's clear his was a broad church when it came to addressing the needs of his fellow-humans. But it was his work with the young children who were forced or duped into prostitution that offered him his greatest publicity coup, prove to be his most controversial crusade and score for him his most infamous victory.
It was when Stead put the plan of The Maiden Tribute To Modern Babylon into action that he knew his destiny was set. JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO LEARN ABOUT THE MAIDEN TRIBUTE.
He was never short on confidence, and was something of a child prodigy, particularly with Latin which he was initially taught by his Congregationalist minister father at home in Embleton in Northumberland. As with all small, underdeveloped poverty-rich places, Embleton was a somewhat savage place; the Anglican vicar of the Holy Trinity church Mandell Creighton click wrote in his published letters of 1904:
In many ways the moral standard of the village was very low, and it was a difficult place to improve. There was no resident squire, the chief employers of labour were on much the same level of cultivation as those they employed, and in some cases owned the public-houses and paid the wages there. Such defeatist talk was the antithesis of the Congregationalist movement, a very 'hands on' set with self-determination at its heart. No doubt the opportunities for change and the possibilities for redemption Stead so carefully promoted in his working life were seeds sown in those early days at his father's knee, working the uphill struggle on the folk of the northern badlands. Speaking of which... in 1861 when he was twelve, Stead was sent to Silcoats School in Wakefield, sited between that town (now a city) and Morley, a suburb town of Leeds in West Yorkshire. George, just up the road in the centre of the dirty town, was four, and his brother, William was two; Algernon was a babe in arms.
On leaving school, he found work as a clerk back right up north in the city of Newcastle, before landing the job opportunity of a lifetime as editor of the Northern Echo, based in Darlington. He began submitting stories to the paper at its inception in 1870, and when no-one else was available to fill the post - and work for free - he was offered the top job. Recruiting an editor this way might seem a rash act, but Stead had received an apprenticeship of sorts from the previous editor, John Copleston, and when the proprietor felt an editorial change was needed, he offered the job to Stead, who said of the job that it was a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil. Unlike our George, Stead regarded his power as a man of letters was a mission: I felt the sacredness of the power placed in my hands, to be used on behalf of the poor, the outcast and the oppressed.
Stead, more than most, realised that the rise in literacy brought about by the 1870 Education Act would require increases in the availability of things to read - and, by extension,something to spend wages on other than the basics of life, and the daily newspaper was the most accessible of reading matter to sell and buy. And, because of its availability, a newspaper could reach a wide and relatively uneducated population ripe for leading in whatever direction an editor wanted to take it. Like the shrewd businessman that he was, Stead did not aim his editorials at the poor themselves - after all, they were unlikely to be buying newspapers, though they could access them at libraries (as George and his family did). His preferred targets were the powerful who could make the necessary changes to the system, or who abused the system they ruled, observed by a readership who could be stirred up to follow down any path that would support Stead's point of view. But, like George, Stead stopped short of advocating on behalf of those at very bottom of the pile. These he saw as the rejects of society who existed in life's primordial slime, virtually un-evolved from the rabble of the Dark Ages. As with many Victorian self-confessed experts on the lower orders Stead feared (as did George) that encouraging such dregs of humanity would weaken the bloodline of the more capable. And who was there to counter this argument? After all, the poor underclass are always the least powerful group in any society, and realists might argue someone has to be at the bottom, just as someone has to be at the top, so why waste resources on fate? And, for one as touched by Christianity as was Stead, Christ's teachings on the subject will have resonated: Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces (Matthew 7:6).
A quick summary of things Stead started (as listed in Saint or Sensationalist? The Story of WT Stead by Victor Pierce Jones): newspaper advice columns; village lending libraries; penny per copy editions of the Classics of English literature; pen pals; baby adoption agencies; hostels for working women; the Peace Palace in The Hague; the Civic Federation in Chicago – and many sorts of social clubs and self-help organisations. Add to this his work exploring Spiritualism, and it's clear his was a broad church when it came to addressing the needs of his fellow-humans. But it was his work with the young children who were forced or duped into prostitution that offered him his greatest publicity coup, prove to be his most controversial crusade and score for him his most infamous victory.
It was when Stead put the plan of The Maiden Tribute To Modern Babylon into action that he knew his destiny was set. JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO LEARN ABOUT THE MAIDEN TRIBUTE.
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